Since their introduction, blogs (like Mashable, Lifehacker, The Huffington Post) and social network sites (like MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter) have attracted millions of users, many of whom have integrated these sites into their daily practices. There are now hundreds of social networks and thousands of blogs supporting a wide range of interests and topics. However, if you are interested in follow or participate any number of these blogs or social network sites, you would have to go to their individual URL one by one and access to the content. This presents another problem, and that is users now have to be familiar with multiple user interfaces. In addition data is accessed in different ways which also makes it difficult for users learn all these different sites.
There are some alternatives like social network aggregators, but they do not provide social network capability of their own. Still others provide social network capability, but only for separate groups or organizations made up of small unconnected social network groups, but does not have the power of combined networks. In addition, there are no solutions to manage information on these blogs and social network sites all together, like searching, sorting, organizing, accessing, etc. in a combined manner. Users have to do that one by one in every site. Furthermore, most social network sites do not provide sufficient capability to users for categorizing content based on some general topics which makes relevant data spread around and make it difficult for searching and finding.
In these blogs and social network sites, user typically do not have the ability to send a message to only one person, or only to those select group of people. Typically information open to anyone and user has very little control on who to communicate with. To address this problem, instead, individuals and businesses also have been using emails for communication, which provides control over who to communicate with. However, emails do have number of drawbacks as well. For example, when an email is sent to five people, five copies of the original email is sent increasing the overall storage requirements substantially. Another problem with emails is the lost emails. Many users complain that they did not receive the email. For number of reasons emails do not arrive at their intended destinations. Some of them end up in so called “junk mail” folders, which some people do not look at or check only rarely. Another problem with emails is that anyone who knows your email address can send and email and you cannot effectively control that. So, users end up with hundreds of emails in their inbox that they have to review and delete, which wastes time and causes distraction. Another problem with email is that all emails come to your only email inbox. It takes time and effort to review and sort them based on content or who it is coming from.
Another problem with these sites is that they provide only one way of communication like, either posting, or text messaging, etc. User cannot use posting, text messaging, emailing, and private messaging for communication in one site. Another problem with these blogs and social network sites is generally users do not know if there is a message or communication or content until user logs in to the sites individually one by one.
Another problem is the privacy issue. In many of these blogs and social network sites, information is open to the public and shared. This aspect of the social networks limits use of social networks for businesses, government agencies, educational institutions, etc. Blogs and social networks, as the name suggest, are primarily connecting people in a social environment, but not meant to be used in a business environment where privacy and security are important.
Another problem with these sites that they do not have rating or ranking of content or users. Not having such capabilities typically promotes content that is not desirable by many users. In addition, these sites do not provide incentives to users for participation and contribution. As a result, quality of the content created in these sites may suffer.
Therefore, there is a strong need for a system and methods for creating, managing, searching, categorizing, sharing, collecting, aggregating and communicating public and private content and personal messages through multiplicity of communication channels like posting, personal email, and text, audio, and video messaging. Furthermore, system and methods for connecting users to multiplicity of content like social networks, blogs, events, discussion boards, news and for enabling users to access content through wireless as well as wired networks, utilizing portable and non-portable electronic hardware device. Furthermore, system and methods for providing a unified hierarchical user interface for content display, management, access and communication. Furthermore, system and methods for incentivizing users for participation and quality content by use of credits, and ranks and ratings of users and content. Furthermore, system and methods for enabling sponsors to engage with users by sponsoring categories or target users at specific categories based on user interest and by providing incentives to those users for their participations. Furthermore, system and methods for enabling business managing their content and internal communications in a private and secure environment.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, the approaches described in this section may not be prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
A system for providing a trusted network includes a one-way trust lists data store loaded in the memory including a first one-way trust list of a first member and a second one-way trust list of a second member. The first one-way trust list stores information identifying a first set of members related to the first member that reciprocally trust each other and the second one-way trust list information identifying a second set of members related to the second member that reciprocally trust each other. In order to become a reciprocal trusted member between two members, both members have to send a specific message to the other counterpart member to specifically agree to be a trusted member of the other counterpart member. The system further includes a master reciprocated trust folders data store loaded in the memory to store a plurality of reciprocated trusted folders, each of the reciprocated trusted folders storing content exchanged amongst corresponding members that reciprocally trust each other. The system further includes a reciprocated trust management engine loaded in the memory and executed by the processor, the reciprocated trust management engine being coupled to the one-way trust lists data store and to the master reciprocated trust folders data store.
The reciprocated trust management engine receives first content exchanged between the first member and the second member; in response to the first content, matches a first entry in the first one-way trust list with the second member to determine whether the first member trusts the second member, where the first entry includes identifying information of the second member if the first member trusts the second member; matches a second entry in the second one-way trust list with the first member to determine whether the second member trusts the first member, wherein the second entry includes identifying information of the first member if the second member trusts the first member; creates a first reciprocated trust folder for a group of members including the first member and the second member only if the first entry of the first one-way trust list matches the second member and the second entry of the second one-way trust list matches the first member; stores the first content as trusted content in the first reciprocated trust folder; maintains the first reciprocated trust folder in the master reciprocated trust folders datastore as one of the plurality of reciprocated trust folders stored therein; only both the first member and the second member have access to the trusted content from the first reciprocated trust folder, including modifying the trusted content stored in the first reciprocated trust folder; and the first reciprocated trust folder stores a single instance of the trusted content that is shared between the first member and the second member.